Both Sibilla Aleramo (1876-1960), one of Italy's most renowned and controversial women writers, and autobiography, as a generic minefield for debates on theories of the subject, have received a good deal of critical attention over the past fifteen years. The uncompromisingly autobiographical nature of Sibilla's work has been, at various times, revered and reviled, be it for what she says, or how she says it. My focus is precisely on the different forms she uses to write her self in four texts - a fictional autobiography, lyrical novel, epistolary novel and a diary - and how these construct, modify and deconstruct her self-representations in a continual process of intertextual reading and revising. Yet her texts resist easy classification. While sometimes confirming boundaries of genre and gender, they also constantly call them into question by exposing their limits, their intersection with fictional norms, and their shifting discursive affiliations. Because Sibilla was all her life concerned with gender, and the relationship of femininity to her writing, many aspects of her work appear relevant today. I explore how they anticipate feminist theories on the construction of female subjectivity in a combination of theory and autobiographical practice which highlights the interrelationship of the two. Here Sibilla's focus on the maternal is particularly indicative of this tendency, where it is woven into the generic structures of her texts as well as being an important focus of the autobiographical "story". Furthermore, her texts challenge the notion of self defined by male bias, and present opportunities for critical testing of autobiographical theories themselves by offering not one, but several, works for examination.

This thesis is an investigation of how fa’afafine identities are constructed, maintained, and changed in the contexts of contemporary Samoa and New Zealand. Fa’afafine are biological Samoan males who, to varying degrees, enact feminised gender identities. In existent representations, fa’afafine tend to be interpreted through western conceptualisations of sex/gender/sexuality, or using models of ‘primitivism’, which locate them as instantiations of expressions of gender or sexuality that are more ‘natural’ than those of the ‘civilised’ west. ‘Traditionally’, all gender in Samoa is primarily marked through labour, although the influx of western material and discursive culture has led to a shift in emphasis on sexuality in expressions of Samoan gender. These shifts have inevitably affected how fa’afafine identities are enacted, experienced, and understood. These influences are even more marked for fa’afafine who migrate to New Zealand, who appear to go through a number of ‘stages’ in first assimilating into western sex/gender discourses, and then asserting their unique identities as fa’afafine. However, the paths followed by individual migrants vary according to the dominant ideologies of the time. The processes by which migrant fa’afafine locate physical and social spaces in which they can enact feminine identities are outlined, which usually initially involve identifying as either ‘gay man’ or ‘woman’. In order to identify explicitly as ‘fa’afafine’ in a New Zealand context, participants must understand themselves as somewhat ambiguously gendered. Data collection has been primarily through in-depth interviews, supplemented by observation, to enable analysis of how fa’afafine themselves understand their identities and lived experiences. The particular problems outlining these processes in the light of the exigencies of cross-cultural research are discussed in the methodology chapter. The theoretical approaches underlying the thesis as a whole incorporate the perspectives of Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, and Judith Butler in understanding gender as performative and open to slippage in response to the availability of particular discourses, yet also sedimented over time in a manner which configures the body in ways which are not easily altered.

TV Love is a study of the emotional and imaginative possibilities summoned and sustained by television programmes, possibilities that are here gathered under the rubric of love. By taking seriously a vernacular claim to love particular television programmes, this thesis intervenes in conventional practices of academic television criticism. It does so in order to develop an approach that would allow a focus on what television programmes make possible for the viewers who love them. I argue that the transactions between viewers and television texts constitute forms of emotional training that not only reproduce social subjectification, but also enable diverse forms of intimate experience. This is especially important for those subjects who struggle to find forms of psychic sustenance in an off-screen context. The critical approach taken in this thesis is termed reparative, following the work of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, in so far as it describes a process of restoring value to much maligned cultural objects. As a rationale for critical practice, reparation recognises the inadequacy of the social context in which diverse subjects must make a possible world for themselves. In particular, reparation describes the processes by which queer subjects have been able to mark out the terms of their own possibility in the face of difficult social or psychic conditions. The value of reparative criticism is not limited to queer readers or viewers, although queerness frequently demonstrates what is at issue between the conventions of academic television criticism and the alternate mode developed in this thesis. While academic criticism most often focuses on the ideological lessons presumed to be delivered by television programmes, this frequently overlooks the smaller scale emotional work that subjects carry out every day. Television programmes can both enable this emotional work and be the subject of its labours. In order to develop a fuller and more useful practice of television criticism than currently exists, TV Love contends that it is necessary to attend to the affectively enlivening potential of television for its viewers. The first chapter considers television as a technology of intimacy in terms of its domestic location and critically analyses television scholarship that has sought to address the specificity of that context. The second chapter further develops this theoretical overview by examining approaches that more explicitly deal with the affective engagements television allows. It then moves on to outline the particular reparative approach taken in this thesis. Chapter Three considers the series of documentaries that began with Seven Up in 1964 and, in a departure from the conventional discussion of class associated with the documentaries, this chapter focuses on the affective training the series carries out over its four decade history. The situation comedy Bewitched is the focus of the fourth chapter, which explores the way in which sitcoms can be profoundly imbricated in the very experience of childhood and family life. The repetition of a favourite programme from childhood, even years later, can generate emotional returns that demonstrate this intimate connection. Chapter Five continues the discussion of situation comedy with an analysis of the seventies hit The Mary Tyler Moore Show. In particular this chapter attends to the reiterations of the Mary Richards character across other textual contexts in order to identify the emotional competencies the Mary character makes possible beyond her seventies context. Chapter Six takes on the heritage criticism that has framed academic thinking about the serial drama Brideshead Revisited and presents an alternate reading in which high-cultural forms serve to connote homosexuality. The final chapter examines a series of programmes about the late Diana, Princess of Wales in order to identify the affective politics those programmes might be seen to enable. / Images removed from thesis for copyright reasons

Both Sibilla Aleramo (1876-1960), one of Italy's most renowned and controversial women writers, and autobiography, as a generic minefield for debates on theories of the subject, have received a good deal of critical attention over the past fifteen years. The uncompromisingly autobiographical nature of Sibilla's work has been, at various times, revered and reviled, be it for what she says, or how she says it. My focus is precisely on the different forms she uses to write her self in four texts - a fictional autobiography, lyrical novel, epistolary novel and a diary - and how these construct, modify and deconstruct her self-representations in a continual process of intertextual reading and revising. Yet her texts resist easy classification. While sometimes confirming boundaries of genre and gender, they also constantly call them into question by exposing their limits, their intersection with fictional norms, and their shifting discursive affiliations. Because Sibilla was all her life concerned with gender, and the relationship of femininity to her writing, many aspects of her work appear relevant today. I explore how they anticipate feminist theories on the construction of female subjectivity in a combination of theory and autobiographical practice which highlights the interrelationship of the two. Here Sibilla's focus on the maternal is particularly indicative of this tendency, where it is woven into the generic structures of her texts as well as being an important focus of the autobiographical "story". Furthermore, her texts challenge the notion of self defined by male bias, and present opportunities for critical testing of autobiographical theories themselves by offering not one, but several, works for examination.

This thesis is an investigation of how fa’afafine identities are constructed, maintained, and changed in the contexts of contemporary Samoa and New Zealand. Fa’afafine are biological Samoan males who, to varying degrees, enact feminised gender identities. In existent representations, fa’afafine tend to be interpreted through western conceptualisations of sex/gender/sexuality, or using models of ‘primitivism’, which locate them as instantiations of expressions of gender or sexuality that are more ‘natural’ than those of the ‘civilised’ west. ‘Traditionally’, all gender in Samoa is primarily marked through labour, although the influx of western material and discursive culture has led to a shift in emphasis on sexuality in expressions of Samoan gender. These shifts have inevitably affected how fa’afafine identities are enacted, experienced, and understood. These influences are even more marked for fa’afafine who migrate to New Zealand, who appear to go through a number of ‘stages’ in first assimilating into western sex/gender discourses, and then asserting their unique identities as fa’afafine. However, the paths followed by individual migrants vary according to the dominant ideologies of the time. The processes by which migrant fa’afafine locate physical and social spaces in which they can enact feminine identities are outlined, which usually initially involve identifying as either ‘gay man’ or ‘woman’. In order to identify explicitly as ‘fa’afafine’ in a New Zealand context, participants must understand themselves as somewhat ambiguously gendered. Data collection has been primarily through in-depth interviews, supplemented by observation, to enable analysis of how fa’afafine themselves understand their identities and lived experiences. The particular problems outlining these processes in the light of the exigencies of cross-cultural research are discussed in the methodology chapter. The theoretical approaches underlying the thesis as a whole incorporate the perspectives of Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, and Judith Butler in understanding gender as performative and open to slippage in response to the availability of particular discourses, yet also sedimented over time in a manner which configures the body in ways which are not easily altered.

My central concern in this thesis is to extend understandings of how the social categories of rurality, gender and class are implicated in subjective meanings and the claiming of worth (associated with paid work) for a group of rural-based wine production workers. However, this concern does not reflect a relativist stance whereby all gendered, classed and rural experiences are read as equal but different, as this would deny symbolic and material inequalities. The core research question is: What gendered classed and rural subjective meanings do women and men production workers in the wine industry give their working selves? A key impetus for this study was my desire to represent working people's lives through a dynamic model of class, gender and rurality that overcomes the limitations of analyses which portray the lives of people, who have limited access to dominant symbolic discourses and processes, solely through the lens of deficit models of class and gender (Savage 2000, 2005; Skeggs 2004a). The overall methodological approach stressed the 'qualitative'. A feminist interpretation of constructivist grounded theory methodology framed the research (Charmaz 2000). Data generation involved two in-depth, face-to-face interviews with a sample of 16 workers (8 women and 8 men) based within the production function of a rural-based corporate wine organisation in South Australia. In the first interview I used a life history orientated approach and in the second I used a semi-structured interview schedule to examine the workers' current working lives, reflecting an understanding that rather than merely having experiences, 'subjects are constituted through experience' (Skeggs 1997). Interpretative analysis (using NUDIST) of the data re-orientated my engagement with established analyses of rurality, gender and class in order to build new, empirically-driven understandings of how multiple social categories are implicated in lived experiences. Preliminary data analysis led me to engage with Bourdieu's (1984) key concept of economic, social and cultural capitals as an analytical tool to examine how rural, gendered and classed lived experiences gave meanings to these workers. I have also paid attention to Skeggs' (2004a) argument that contemporary 'class making' involves uneven value attribution, the conferring of use values on practices and goods, engagement with inscriptions of value (inscription of lack of value and contestation of this), and critique of 'undeserved' exchange-based capitals as well as unequal access to exchangeable capitals. Skeggs' theoretical contribution has been extended to gendered and rural processes to examine how workers claim worth (as a worker) through these as well as classed processes. An exploration of the workers' family and work-based trajectories (including family historical ties to the local wine region, educational experiences and working trajectories) demonstrates the multiple ways in which class, gender and rurality are involved in lived experiences. The data highlight the ongoing influences of accrual of capital values (both use and exchange) tied to family upbringing and working trajectories, while analysis of current meanings of work provides greater detail on how the workers engage with value attribution of capital values, claiming worth in their work through challenging 'undeserved' capital values of winemakers, managers and technical experts.

Both Sibilla Aleramo (1876-1960), one of Italy's most renowned and controversial women writers, and autobiography, as a generic minefield for debates on theories of the subject, have received a good deal of critical attention over the past fifteen years. The uncompromisingly autobiographical nature of Sibilla's work has been, at various times, revered and reviled, be it for what she says, or how she says it. My focus is precisely on the different forms she uses to write her self in four texts - a fictional autobiography, lyrical novel, epistolary novel and a diary - and how these construct, modify and deconstruct her self-representations in a continual process of intertextual reading and revising. Yet her texts resist easy classification. While sometimes confirming boundaries of genre and gender, they also constantly call them into question by exposing their limits, their intersection with fictional norms, and their shifting discursive affiliations. Because Sibilla was all her life concerned with gender, and the relationship of femininity to her writing, many aspects of her work appear relevant today. I explore how they anticipate feminist theories on the construction of female subjectivity in a combination of theory and autobiographical practice which highlights the interrelationship of the two. Here Sibilla's focus on the maternal is particularly indicative of this tendency, where it is woven into the generic structures of her texts as well as being an important focus of the autobiographical "story". Furthermore, her texts challenge the notion of self defined by male bias, and present opportunities for critical testing of autobiographical theories themselves by offering not one, but several, works for examination.

The problem of incest is beginning to receive a recognition and research attention long overdue. Becoming more evident is the prevalence and far reaching effects of incest. Currently, little distinction is made between the treatment approach for males and females, yet research indicates differences between the two sexes. This study explores possible differences between male and female incest victims in (1) their moral ethic, (2) their self-definition, (3) the basis from which they felt compelled to comply with the incestuous abuse, (4) the reasons they believed the sexual abuse was right or wrong, (5) the reasons for telling someone or keeping the incest a secret, (6) how they decided whether or not they made the right choice, (7) the manner in which they have changed since the abuse began, (8) the content and degree of their own guilt and/or lowered esteem, and (9) the ideas they have of changes which could have prevented the abuse.

Women comprise one of the fastest growing populations of the criminal justice system, yet little research exists concerning the success of these women completing a coed pretrial drug court diversion program. Trauma theory was applied to inform the variables in this quantitative correlational study. The predictive nature of age, educational level, marital status, violent criminal history, and mental health problems for women were examined in relation to completion of a coed pretrial drug court diversion program. A convenience sample from secondary, archival data was obtained from a criminal justice agency in Washington, DC. The dataset included women who participated in the program between January 1, 2009 and December 31, 2014. Logistic regression models were used to predict the likelihood of whether these women completed drug court and determine which independent variables were likely to increase or decrease the probability of program completion. Results of the study failed to yield statistically significant relationships between the variables examined. However, the findings indicate possible relationships between marriage and drug court completion, and postsecondary education and drug court completion, which require additional research. Implications for positive social change are drawn for other criminal justice agencies, drug courts, and administrators for enhancing program delivery and reducing women's recidivism.

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